I just wanted to share an article form the New York Times on restaurant menus and their psychological effects on diners. Most of it you all probably can figure out on your own, but there are a few things that I found interesting, such as:
Some restaurants use what researchers call decoys. For example, they may place a really expensive item at the top of the menu, so that other dishes look more reasonably priced; research shows that diners tend to order neither the most nor least expensive items, drifting toward the middle.
Again, most of you probably have figured that out, but there are more, like adjectives, pictures, and in some cases, name brands (think about this next time you go to Waffle House and look at the drink menu).
All in all, with a little bit of knowledge before hand, one can easily find themselves saving some money and still getting a nice meal out of the deal.
Source: New York Times
(http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/dining/23menus.html)
maybe so, but menu-linguistic programming [MLP] is WAY beyond the ken of my restaurant. their most recent genius menu idea was: make the font so tiny no one could read it. i can't even read it! AND they moved everything so it just fuddles people more when i point at items from memory.
ReplyDeleteThen, unable to decide whether to go with a "progressive" wine list or a "cheap stuff first" wine list, they tried for both, resulting in a "random jumble" arrangement that almost always results in people saying "feh! just gimme a glass of house red."
must be corporate :)
ReplyDeleteI'll give mine credit, they have the power to change it when needed, but our menu is boring. plain, drab, looks like it was printed using the cheapest of inks (probably was) and bound in leather.
We used to have the 9 instead of $9, but people kept asking for the #9 not realizing that was price, not order number. Idiots! :)